Podcast Like It's ...

108: Dogville with Lucia Aniello

Phil and Emily are joined by Emmy-winning Hacks creator Lucia Aniello for Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003). Nicole Kidman's fugitive Grace hides out in a Depression-era Rocky Mountain town staged entirely with chalk outlines on a bare soundstage, and the townsfolk's charity slowly curdles into something monstrous. Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, Chloë Sevigny, Patricia Clarkson, and James Caan fill out von Trier's three-hour moral experiment, narrated with dry glee by John Hurt.The three dig into the chalk-outline staging as both radical theater and pure provocation, Kidman spending her post-Hours Oscar heat on the least commercial project imaginable, and where the film's brutal final turn lands two decades on. There's a real case here for reading Dogville as the most savage thing ever built to look like a filmed stage play. Cruel, funny, and unlike anything else same as the movie.Follow the show & guest:Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeitsPhil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscoveEmily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjamsLucia Aniello - https://www.instagram.com/luciaaniellosetfits💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

107: Die Another Day with Brooke Solomon and Jordan Gustafson

Phil and Emily are joined by Brooke Solomon and Jordan Gustafson, hosts of The Queer Quadrant, for Lee Tamahori's Die Another Day (2002). Pierce Brosnan's last outing as James Bond runs from a North Korean prison to an Icelandic ice palace, with Halle Berry surfacing as NSA agent Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson in the follow-up to her Monster's Ball Best Actress win. Rosamund Pike (in her screen debut), Toby Stephens, a Madonna theme song, and a famously invisible Aston Martin fill out the most gadget-drunk Bond of the early CGI era.The four dig into Jinx as the almost-spinoff that never happened, how a 40th-anniversary Bond tips all the way into digital excess, and why this particular entry burned itself so vividly into their childhood memories. There's a real case here for reading Die Another Day as the exact moment the Brosnan era buckles under its own kitesurfing, para-sailing weight. Gaudy, campy, and gloriously overblown same as the movie.Follow the show & guests:Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeitsPhil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscoveEmily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjamsBrooke Solomon - https://www.instagram.com/brookebsolomonJordan Gustafson - https://www.instagram.com/jordan_gustafsonThe Queer Quadrant - https://www.instagram.com/queerquadrant💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

106: America's Sweethearts with Katharine LaRonde

Phil and Emily are joined by writer and podcaster Katharine LaRonde to dig into Joe Roth's America's Sweethearts (2001). Julia Roberts plays the overlooked assistant stuck managing the press junket for her superstar sister (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her sister's washed-up, soon-to-be-ex-husband (John Cusack), whose divorce turns out to be the only story the reporters actually want. It spirals into a movie that can't decide if it's mocking the junket circus or just running one.The three dig into the film's Hollywood-satire instincts that never quite land a punch, John Cusack playing a guy who's spent a year and a half hiding from his own life at Alan Arkin's wellness retreat, and Roger Ebert's read on the movie as a watered-down Singin' in the Rain. There's a real case here for reading America's Sweethearts as the movie that wanted to skewer Hollywood but fell in love with it instead. Promising, self-conscious, and never quite committed, same as the movie.Follow the show & guest:Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeitsPhil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscoveEmily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjamsKatharine LaRonde - https://www.instagram.com/katlaronde/💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

105: The Gift with April Wolfe

Phil and Emily are joined by writer and critic April Wolfe for Sam Raimi's The Gift (2000). Cate Blanchett plays a widowed Georgia fortune teller who reads cards to keep her family afloat and gets pulled into a murder when a local woman (Katie Holmes) goes missing. Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Hilary Swank, and Greg Kinnear round out a stacked Southern-gothic ensemble.The three dig into Raimi working in a minor key between the Evil Dead films and Spider-Man, Blanchett anchoring a lurid pulp thriller with total conviction, the movie's very year-2000 ideas about class and the South, and the simple pleasure of a mid-budget, star-packed genre picture that basically nobody makes anymore. April brings a horror writer's eye to what works, what's silly, and what quietly holds up.Follow the show & guest:Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeitsPhil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscoveEmily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjamsApril Wolfe - https://www.instagram.com/awolfeful💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

104: Pay It Forward with Carson Olshansly

Phil and Emily are joined by comedian Carson Olshansky for Mimi Leder's Pay It Forward (2000). Haley Joel Osment plays a seventh-grader who answers a social-studies assignment think of a way to change the world by inventing a simple chain reaction: do a big favor for three people, and ask each of them to "pay it forward." Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt orbit as the scarred teacher and the struggling single mom the plan quietly sets out to fix.The three get into how a movie this earnest slowly curdles into something else, the infamous ending and whether it earns a single second of it, Spacey and Hunt doing an enormous amount of Very Serious Acting, and what it's like to revisit a turn-of-the-millennium prestige weepie with fresh, unsentimental eyes. Affectionate and merciless in roughly equal measure.Follow the show & guest:Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeitsPhil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscoveEmily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjamsCarson Olshansky - https://www.instagram.com/carsonolshansky💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.